The Day He Won and What Came After

If you should learn one thing from Dennis Lehr it would be to expect the unexpected. 

The only way someone could describe Dennis Lehr in that moment was like looking at a fish out of water. Holding a beer, Dennis talked with the other lawyers from his firm that had traveled with him to Kazakhstan. There was a buzz in the crisp autumn air – a sober person could not be found within a mile. The purpose of the visit was to help the Kazakhstan government set up banks, but you would not be able to tell that based on how Dennis Lehr spent his night. Instead of being in an office, Dennis was in the middle of the woods standing next to a bon-fire. In lieu of his routine 3 piece suit, he was wearing casual clothes. Yet the most extraordinary part, was the fact that in his pocket Dennis held the eye of an animal. 

Dennis had spent that week working alongside the Kazakhstan government conducting a study. As part of the American Bar Association he held offices all around the globe, and was sent to Kazakhstan for a mission. The mission attracted people of all kinds, from tribal leaders, to lawyers like Dennis, to other leaders all under the goal of establishing banks in Kazakhstan.  

The week concluded in a final dinner in a local forest — the entire cohort gathered together, and retold stories from their time together. Finally, one of the elders of the tribe handed Dennis an eye, a symbol of his work and the highest honor one can receive. In Kazakhstan, the exchange of an animal's eye was a ritual given to a man who earned the highest honor of the night. It was seen as a prize, a token, and was meant to be eaten. Instead, Dennis smoothly slipped the eye into his pocket without detection.  Turning his gaze to the stars above him Dennis began to reflect on the journey of law that led him to the woods in Kazakhstan. 

– 

Growing up, Dennis often found a courtroom inside his own living room. His Uncle Morris and Father Allan, who were both lawyers themselves, often brought their cases home. Listening to his Father and Uncle practice litigating inside his home, he began to pick up on legal jargon, practicing for when he would one day become a lawyer himself. After school he would go to his Uncle’s firm, Morris and Morris, and read piles of briefs on his uncle’s desk. Dennis found each case more interesting than the next. Growing up with a family of lawyers, Dennis decided to go to law school. Dennis attended Yale University to get his Bachelor of Laws following his education from New York University. 

During his time at Yale, Dennis continued to work at his Uncle’s firm writing briefs. “My Uncle Morris used to read the briefs and he liked the arguments that I made. So he would repeat that to the judge and one day he said, ‘You go up to the judge and make the argument.’ So that was the first time I went in front of the judge and I introduced myself and made the argument.”

“Well what happened?”

“The judge said, ‘You win’.”

Throughout his career he would continue to hear this phrase time and time again. Dennis worked on a multitude of cases, and in the beginning of his career at least, the case work largely surrounded the creation of new financial institutions and banks. The intersection of finance and law was a perfect niche for Dennis at the time — not only because of the work itself, but because of the people he met along the way. The cases Dennis worked on led him to new people and places, all of whom played a role throughout Dennis’s career. Dennis, who was living in Washington D.C at the time, was sent to meet John Warner. Warner was interested in opening another branch office for his bank, and met with Dennis who was working at the city comptroller’s office. After this meeting, John and Dennis would become close friends. As soon as the meeting was over, John offered Dennis a job at his firm, Hogan and Hartsman, and the pair continued to work together. Their friendship brought them to  unexpected places, including dinners at the White House with President Johnson. 

Throughout his career, Dennis continued to work with large corporations like Borden and Ball, and the Securities and Exchange Commision in Washington D.C and New York, and even taught as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He gained experience, expanded his social network, and learned how to hone his talent of litigating. Despite his many years representing big corporations, Dennis took a risk and decided to represent what lawyers referred to as “little man,” a non-corporate entity. A complete 180 from the type of law he had spent most of his entire career practicing.

Dennis took on a case to represent the Pasqua Native Americans. The Pasqua had a long-standing cultural practice of fishing, a tradition that was inherent to their tribe and their food supply. The tribe was negotiating with the local government in Maine over their right to fish freely. Dennis took on this case pro-bono despite backlash from the government officials he was so often surrounded by. “I went to the court by myself and I said to the judge, “Judge, I want to correct an injustice”. Of all the cases that Dennis has been handed over the decades he was in law, this was the one that meant the most to him. 

“So what were the results of the case?”

“ I won,” he said proudly with a smile painted with reminiscence. 

“He was so proud of this in his lifetime, I think this is probably one of his finest achievements in law.”, commented Dennis’s wife. 

Dennis was willing to put himself in a more precarious position, always choosing to stand up for what he believed was just even if it meant choosing the road less traveled. He stuck to his gut which rarely proved him wrong. Even though Dennis acquired more accolades during his law career than one person could count on all of their fingers and toes, the moments in his career that really challenged him to stick to his beliefs on what was just or not were ultimately what meant so much more to him than any award or single-win.